AsiaLIFE

As Georgie Treasure-Evans prepares for three weeks backpacking around northern Laos with her husband and two girls under five, she shares a few tips to help you plan for your own family adventures.

What better region to brave with children than Southeast Asia, cheek pinching aside? You are welcomed everywhere by willing babysitters and playmates – from local kids to fully-grown backpackers. You can relax on long bus journeys as the children get passed around your fellow passengers for a good dose of ogling and boiled sweet-pushing. Nobody cares when you ask the bus to make five loo stops in half an hour. Even a tantrum provides intriguing relief from the tedium of the journey.

Here are a few essentials to add to your usual list. Keep it simple and only pack what you and your kids can carry! 



Take your favourite baby carrier, and a cotton sling that folds up small. The Ergo carries new-borns up to four year olds – perfect for long walks or late night transits.

A wet cloth in a plastic bag is great for washing faces and hands. Waste-free, it is eco-friendly and lighter than a pack of wipes. Accepting that your offspring will look and smell rather like street children for most of the trip can be quite liberating. It helps you pack half as many clothes. A bendy, plastic ‘catchy’ bib that you can fold up and shove in a pocket is great to stop children picking food up off the floor. It doubles up as a nosebag if you fill it with raisins for children snacking on the loose.

Bags of nuts, dried apricots and prunes are filled with protein and iron for when the children’s diet becomes less balanced. Otherwise Royal D and local snacks will probably suffice. An inflatable highchair that folds up small makes having to eat out three times a day with babies or toddlers bearable. Take some stories and songs downloaded onto an MP3 player with headphones and/or speakers as well as a book of children’s songs or the words to your favourite songs. Be prepared to sing for hours!

Pack a small kit of natural remedies. Echinacea is good for fighting colds, lavender oil soothes mossie bites and aids restful sleep, citronella repels mosquitoes, chamomile helps reduce skin irritations, aloe vera calms sunburn, tea tree is a good antiseptic and eucalyptus unblocks noses. Also pack a full first-aid kit, sunscreen, sun suits and hats and mossie guard.

Toys come last on my list from experience. Travelling kids mostly play with their environment – rubbish, old tin cans, cigarette butts, plug sockets, hotel loo brushes, filthy shoes, etc. My nine-month-old daughter played with a half-full plastic water bottle for three weeks in Vietnam. If we didn’t have it on long journeys we were in trouble.  But, if you have room, pack a bag with small toys that you can empty onto the floor wherever it becomes necessary. Twister is great for older kids and making friends.

Your kids can help you pack. Explain why you need to travel light and tell them how exciting it will be to come home again knowing all their toys are waiting for them. Other than that relax and try not to worry about the mosquitoes, dirt, heat and jetlag. Your kids are probably far more tolerant to these than you are. As we get older we become set in our ways. Children are the perfect antidote! 

Join in their excitement as they experience new cultures, food, transport and lifestyles. Watch them become thoughtful, compassionate and open-minded as they begin to see their own life in the bigger picture. Encourage them to be thankful for this opportunity of a life-time.

Georgie Treasure-Evans writes at www.motherland1.blogspot.com